The educated of those days, with but
few exceptions, believed in astrology, and the possibility of developing
the future fate and fortunes of an individual, whenever the hour of his
birth and the name of the star or planet under which he was born could
be ascertained. The more ignorant class, however, generally associated
the character of the conjurer with that of the necromancer or magician,
and consequently attributed his predictions to demoniacal influence.
Neither were they much mistaken, for they only judged of these impostors
as they found them. In nineteen cases out of twenty, the character of
the low astrologer, the necromancer, and the quack was associated, and
the influence of the stars and the aid of the devil were both considered
as giving assurance of supernatural knowledge to the same individual.
This unaccountable anxiety to see, as it were, the volume of futurity
unrolled, so far as it discloses individual fate, has characterized
mankind ever since the world began; and hence, even in the present
day, the same anxiety among the ignorant to run after spae-women,
fortunetellers, and gypsies, in order to have their fortunes told
through the means of their adroit predictions.
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